"Have you a boy?" in simulated surprise. "Evie, you are a surprising child. Whom does he take after?"
"Really, I think you are indecent," said her sister, shocked. "You know perfectly well I mean—Ronnie."
"Oh, is he the 'boy'? To you girls everything that raises a hat or smokes a cheap cigar is strangely boyish. Well, is he nearly dead from his midnight labors?"
"I'd like to see you write a long article for the newspapers," said Evie witheringly.
"I wish you could. You may even see that. Tell me about him, Evie. What is he like—what sort of a house has he?" She waited.
"He lives in a flat, and, of course, I've never seen it. You don't imagine that I would go into a man's flat alone, do you?'"
Christina sighed. "There are points about the bourgeoisie mind which are admirable," she said. "What does 'bourgeoisie' mean? The bourgeoisie are the people who have names instead of numbers to their houses; they catch the nine twenty-five to town and go home by the five seventeen. They go to church at least once on Sunday and their wives wear fascinators and patronize the dress circle."
"You talk such rubbish, Christina. I can't make head or tail of it half the time. I don't see what it has got to do with my not going in to Ronnie's flat. It wouldn't be respectable."
"Why didn't I think of that word?" wailed Christina. "Evie."
"Huh?" said Evie, her mouth full of pins and in an unconscious imitation of one who, did she but know it, held her soul in the hollow of his hands.